A few days after the departure of his uncle, Gustave paid a visit to Grinselhof.  He was received by Monsieur De Vlierbeck and his daughter with their usual kindness, passed the greater part of an afternoon with them, and went home at nightfall to the chateau of Echelpoel full of delightful recollections and hopes.  Either from a fear of disturbing the reserved habits of the old gentleman, or from a sense of politeness, Gustave did not at first repeat his visits too frequently; but after a couple of weeks the extreme cordiality of Vlierbeck dispelled all his scruples.  The ardent youth no longer resisted an impulse that drew him toward the bewitching girl, nor did he allow a single day to roll by without passing the afternoon at Grinselhof.  The happy hours flew rapidly on the wings of love.  He strolled with Lenora through the shady walks of the old garden, listened to her father’s observations on science and art, drank in the delicious notes of his loved one’s voice as it was breathed forth in song, or, seated beneath the flowery and spreading catalpa, dreamed the dream of happiness that was in store for him with her who was probably soon to become his betrothed.

If the noble and beautiful face of the maiden had won his eye and enlisted his feelings the moment he first beheld her in the village churchyard, now, that he had become familiar with her character, his love grew so ardently absorbing that the world seemed sad and dead if she were not present to shed the light of her joyous spirit upon every thing around him.  Neither religion nor poetry could conjure up an angel more fascinating than his beloved.  Indeed, though God had endowed her person with all those feminine graces that adorned the first woman in Paradise, he had also lavished on her a heart whose crystalline purity was never clouded, and whose generosity burst forth with every emotion like a limpid spring.

But in all his interviews, Gustave had never yet been alone with Lenora.  When he visited her she never left the apartment where she commonly sat with her father, unless the old gentleman expressed a wish that they should unite in a walk through the garden; and, of course, he had never enjoyed an opportunity to breathe the love that was rising to his lips.  Still, he felt that it was altogether useless to express by words what was passing in their hearts; for the kindness, the respect, the affection, that shone in everybody’s eyes, betokened the feeling which united them in a mingled sentiment of attachment and hope.

Though Gustave entertained profound veneration for Lenora’s father and really loved him as a son, there was something which at times came like a cloud betwixt himself and the old gentleman.  What he heard outside of Grinselhof of De Vlierbeck’s extraordinary avarice had been fully realized since he became intimate at the house.  No one ever offered him a glass of wine or beer; he never received an invitation to dinner or supper; and he frequently observed the trouble that was taken by the master of the house to disguise his inhospitable economy.